I saw a picture filled with little stories. Here the story is the broken fence, the neighbour kids ball, the pots filled with spring bulbs and the worn but loved table. I love the angle of this photo and must remember to take pictures from this spot more often through the seasons.

I saw my first foray in the Starbuck reward card thing.

I saw one of my shells and beach pebbles collections.

I saw homemade Minestrone with chick peas, quinoa and chard.

Something a simple as collection images all with a common theme, looking down in this case, makes the overall story of our days deeper and somehow more real. Off we go into week fifty.

Hi and welcome to week fifteen (in week sixteen…) in this series of stories. Apologies for the bad photos this week!

Photo bombed

My ‘test’ if you will, to knowing if I’ve succeeded in my quest to capture the story, will be that if I can just quote the journaling I’ve used on the page and not need/want to add anything here in the post to explain it further, then I have done it, I’ve got all the bits of the story down.

Here is the story from this page –

San Francisco Botanical Gardens. We continued our quest to get as many ‘selfies’ as we could without anyone offering to help. We got a good one right? With a little help from a squizzer……. September 2012

The takeaway from story number fifteen/would I add anything more?

Each week when I sit down to write these posts I ponder if I am actually learning anything from this process. This page is a good example that something is sticking I think I almost got the story down but I would like to add more.

Here’s what I’d like to have said – Well would you believe it. We had settled ourselves down in a quite spot, set up the camera checked all around for people and I’d pressed the shutter button and run back to sit with Gav. And as we sat there watching the red light flash and count down the seconds till the picture was taken a little grey fella hopped into the shot. We just sat there trying not to roll about laughing. Oh yes the quest for ‘selfies’ is a tricky one indeed.

I may go back and add a piece of cardstock over the top of my words we’ll see. In the meantime I’ll keep pressing on telling stories.

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52 stories is a year long series or adventure in my story telling. Can I get the whole story onto a layout? Am I telling the stories I want to tell? Read the inspiration post here.

My ‘test’ if you will, to knowing if I’ve succeeded in my quest to capture the story, will be that if I can just quote the journaling I’ve used on the page and not need/want to add anything here in the post to explain it further, then I have done it, I’ve got all the bits of the story down.

Here’s the story from this page –

This Pasadena hotel was out first proper stop off. Pasadena! Yay. We loved it here and I adored that view from the breakfast spot. It was surreal that we sat down to have our ‘made in the machine’ pancakes and looked out to those mountains. A ridge of glorious mountains surrounding the sprawl of LA and its nearby towns. Loved it so.

The takeaway from story number fourteen/would I add anything more?

This is another photo from our trip to the US last year. I take lots of photos and sometimes I wonder why I take what I take. Random scenes. But this one although it is a random scene is so meaningful to me. Now I don’t think the story on the page conveys that with as much passion as I felt when I sat in that spot or even feel right now as I look back.

However, to my mind it does tell the basic story and it does mention how amazed I was by the surroundings etc. I think I need to invest some time to dig deeper into my feelings and express them in a different way occasionally rather than opting for the easy ‘I loved it’ route but overall not bad.

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52 stories is a year long series or adventure in my story telling. Can I get the whole story onto a layout? Am I telling the stories I want to tell? Read the inspiration post here.

I see many, many recipes on Pinterest for overnight oats and I wondered how it compared to Bircher muesli which is one of my favourite breakfasts ever since I made it as part of my click tick list.

As I mentioned in that original post there are lots of variations of Bircher, in fact the one I made was not true to the original which had apples/apple juice, nuts, rolled oats, lemon juice and cream (or condensed milk).

From my research around the internet I find that Overnight oats are almost the same as my version of Bircher except instead of apple juice they use yogurt in the overnight soaking as well as the milk. The ratio of oats to ‘liquid’ is still about twice as much liquid as oats.

For my version I soaked the oats in milk and yogurt overnight and added grated apple (not strictly an ingredient that is added to this version), pecan nuts and maple syrup before serving.

It was good but I just didn’t like it as much as my Bircher. Overnight oats seem to be much firmer and I like a bit of a sloppy muesli. Also there seems to be a need to add allsorts of flavours which is great for variation but when you work out those calories they really mount up and I wonder if the goodness of eating the oats becomes lost in the peanut butter/chocolate spread haze.

Glad I gave it a whirl but I shall stick to my tried and tested version.

Hello and a big welcome to week thirteen! So far so good. I hope I’m getting a little better at getting the story down or at least learning where my weaknesses are if the whole story didn’t get on the page.

Proof

My ‘test’ if you will, to knowing if I’ve succeeded in my quest to capture the story, will be that if I can just quote the journaling I’ve used on the page and not need/want to add anything here in the post to explain it further, then I have done it, I’ve got all the bits of the story down.

Here’s the story from this layout –

The lost hair wax. Look there it is as large as life sat all alone on the side of the sink waiting for Gav’s hair to be dry enough so he could apply the wax. I was oblivious when I took this photo. My task was adding another hotel bathroom to my list of photos of hotel bathrooms…….. I probably thought oh look there is the wax. But never thought to remind Gav to ‘do’ his hair. Hey ho. He had crazy hair for the rest of our holidays.

The takeaway from story number thirteen/Would I add anything more?

Oh it makes me laugh even now to see that picture. This is another one of those little stories that might get forgotten along the way. Maybe I could have added the details of when we discovered the loss of the wax and how I laughed and laughed when I downloaded the photo a couple of days later and spotted it. But overall I think I’ve captured the funny side of this tale and how I was so focused on making sure I took the ‘bathroom’ shot I didn’t see anything else.

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52 stories is a year long series or adventure in my story telling. Can I get the whole story onto a layout? Am I telling the stories I want to tell? Read the inspiration post here.

Hello and welcome to another scrapbook layout for my weekly story telling adventure.

Lou Seal

My ‘test’ if you will, to knowing if I’ve succeeded in my quest to capture the story, will be that if I can just quote the journaling I’ve used on the page and not need/want to add anything here in the post to explain it further, then I have done it, I’ve got all the bits of the story down.

Here’s the story –

I was feeling brave. Lou was working the crowd to the left of us. He was getting loads of laughs and photo attention. I grabbed my phone and went to get a shot. Just then right as I lined up the camera he looked right over to me and waved! yes he waved right at me and I waved back. A wow moment.

The takeaway from story number twelve/Would I add anything more?

Probably not. I think I have covered most of how I felt in that moment. I know he is only a Baseball mascot and going round the crowd is his job but I just don’t do things like go and take photos of this kind so it was a big deal for me and I think I conveyed that even though I only wrote a short paragraph. I did go online to check when he first appeared for the Giants so I could include that extra detail.

And I know that when I look back and see this page I will remember the feelings and the fun we had that evening so that’s a win in my book.

(Only issue I have with the whole page? My wonky writing…..)

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52 stories is a year long series or adventure in my story telling. Can I get the whole story onto a layout? Am I telling the stories I want to tell? Read the inspiration post here.

It was a Saturday and I’d set off to meet a friend for a pizza. It was trying to snow as we went into the restaurant but I thought the ground was far too wet for it to settle. We were so surprised to emerge a couple of hours later to a blanket of wonderful snow.

I got her safely home and headed back to Leeds, we’d met up in Ilkley which is out into the countryside about 15 miles from where I live. The roads were coated and there was hardly any traffic. I took it very steady and marveled at the scenes I drove through. It was that perfect, perfect snow that clings magically to branches and lights up the sky.

My tyre tracks.

And the view from our bedroom window.

I kept getting out of bed just to stare at it. Yep, I love snow that much. I especially liked how it had stuck to the telephone cables.

The following morning brought a little melting but the trees were still dressed in their coats of snow so I grabbed this photo. It was just beginning to get light but looked so much brighter because of that white cover.

Only the day before I had snapped some sunny shots in the garden. Here are a couple of comparisons.

And that poor old daffodil.

And let’s not forget about someone else who quite likes the snow.

It was the perfect weekend. It snowed on Satruday evening and was gone by Monday morning. Brief but beautiful and I’m so glad it came.